Mangalyaan sends first picture of Mars, tweets ‘The view is nice up here’

They are here! Mangalyaan’s first offering to India is out in the open.

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) released on Thursday the first image of Mars clicked by the indigenous Mangalyaan, which took India to soaring heights a day ago by slipping into the Red Planet’s orbit on the country’s maiden attempt.

Isro said the photograph — named ‘First Light’ — it posted on its Facebook page and Twitter account was taken from “a height of 7300 km; with 376 m spatial resolution”.

The image showed an orange surface with dark cavities. “The view is nice up here,” Isro said on Twitter.

“The Mars Colour Camera (MCC) onboard started working soon after the orbiter stabilised in the elliptical orbit of Mars and has taken a dozen quality pictures of its surface and its surroundings,” Isro’s scientific secretary V Koteshwara Rao said.

An Isro team led by agency chief K Radhakrishnan met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on Thursday with hard copies of all the pictures taken by the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) probe.

Speculation is rife that Isro might release them later in the day.

Giving his first reaction after the success of MOM Isro chief K Radhakrishnan, who spoke to TOI from Delhi said: “We’ve done our job!”

“Everything looks great. It’s now time to enjoy MOM’s work in space. She’s made us proud by reaching the Red Planet, following a meticulously prescribed path and course,” he said over telephone.